Saturday, 19 March 2016

Guility plea in nude photo hack reveals 'phishing' scam

Washington - Prosecutors have announced the first criminal conviction
in connection with the 2014 hacking of Hollywood celebrities that
resulted in the online release of hundreds of private nude photos.
Officials
in Los Angeles said Tuesday that 36-year-old Ryan Colins of
Pennsylvania agreed to enter a guilty plea on hacking charges as part of
the "Celebgate" investigation.
Authorities said Collins admitted
to a "phishing" scheme to obtain passwords of more than 100 people, many
of them movie stars, and then using that to obtain nude pictures from
their "cloud" storage accounts.
But the officials said there was
no evidence that Collins published the pictures online, and that the
investigation was continuing.
The 2014 hack resulted in the
release of hundreds of nude photos including those of models and
actresses such as Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, stunning Hollywood.
The
US attorney's office said Collins accessed at least 50 iCloud accounts
and 72 Gmail accounts, most of which belonged to female celebrities.
"Today,
people store important private information in their online accounts and
in their digital devices," said US Attorney Eileen Decker.
"Lawless
unauthorized access to such private information is a criminal offense.
My office remains committed to protecting sensitive and personal
information from the malicious actions of sophisticated hackers and
cyber criminals."
According to the plea agreement, Collins from
November 2012 until September 2014 used a scheme in which he sent
e-mails to victims that appeared to be from Apple or Google and asked
victims to provider their usernames and passwords.
This allowed
him to access data from the accounts including photographs stored in the
cloud. In some instances, Collins would use a software program to
download the entire contents of the victims' Apple iCloud backups.
Prosecutors
said the agreement, which must be approved by a judge, calls for an
18-month prison sentence. The case is set to be transferred from
California to Pennsylvania under the deal.